What is the Bible, but a patchwork quilt of documents, sourced from various times and contexts, and stitched together by a questionably morally corrupt organisation?
I was taught that the Bible was the Word of God, inerrant, inspired, infallible, given by the One who was perfect in every way. Therefore it was utterly trustworthy. This made perfect sense to me at the time, when I failed to consider all the evidence against the idea. Why would a perfect and loving being create a book that would then be subject to such variety of interpretation, which ultimately has lead to unspeakable acts of violence and human suffering? How can such a book ever be considered to be ‘Perfect Truth’?
I discovered throughout the years all the various splinter groups within Christianity that largely emerged due to divergent interpretations of their scriptures. And the differences didn’t only happen between groups – they were clearly evident even within the congregations of each group. When I look at it now, it appears as pure madness, and really only serves to further justify secular voices.
When originally penning this blog I attempted to find a middle ground through the understanding that the Bible really is a human work like any other of antiquity, not transcribed by any divine being. Yet as I did so I realised that I just could not continue to identify with the religion of the book, and found sources of meaning outside the book that were far more enlightening than those contained within. As such, I discarded every copy of the book that I contained.
The Bible is merely the work of men who wrote from their cultural worldview at a very different time. It collects largely orally-transmitted stories into a heavily translated written form, which would have made very little sense to those actual characters of the stories. It assisted Christianity to have a shape and form, and was the cause of its splintering. It stands as an important work of history and nothing much more.